$34K?!?

A few days ago we asked Adam to find out why this plot of land is mysteriously $34K.  It's darn low for the area.  It doesn't have a street address but is advertised as "off Skyline Truck Trail," and is oddly named as needing to be sold with the parcel next to it... which doesn't appear to have a separate price.  We haven't heard back from Adam so we thought we'd just go look at the land ourselves.  After all, those are our Saturdays lately.

Chris plotted in the general vicinity to his GPS, dropped a pin, and off we went on the 45 minute drive to Jamul.  We pulled onto the dirt road that leads to this property and immediately found the way blocked by a chain. 

I'd like to say that we doggedly started up the hill, but the truth is, the dog did way better than we did and was much more enthusiastic about climbing the hill.  

Proving once again that 4 legs are better than 2

We did eventually make it to the top of the hill where there was a curve in the road.  Thank goodness!

Rounding the curve... there was the second hill.  😟

I showed off my "I-work-sitting-on-my-butt-all-day" prowess by having to stop, not once, not twice, but six times on the way up.  Chris gracefully did not let show how his long legs and hiking with the dog every week would have allowed him to go much faster.

I grew up not liking to hike.  Hiking in New England is pretty much all uphill, in the dark, wet forrest where creepy crawly, but more importantly slithery things dwell.  None of that for me!  It's hard work, through terrain I'd rather leave in nightmares.  

When we got to New Mexico, hiking was no longer all uphill.  Some of it could be flat!  And it wasn't through forrest.  Indeed, there weren't usually that many trees.  And it wasn't wet either.  It was dry and often rocky.  I like rocks.  My first hike in New Mexico was Tent Rocks.  It was so beautiful, I didn't even mind the uphill section at the end.  Not that I had to do the uphill.  I could easily have turned around and gone back through the beautiful slot canyon.  Yep, I had a choice.  And for the first time, I decided hiking isn't so bad.

Hiking in CA so far seems to be fairly dry like NM, but fairly up like NE.  I can't say I care for the combo.  The good news however, is that this property seems to actually have a reasonable road, albeit dirt, towards it.  Steep, but likely still doable.

The top of the second hill goes around another curve around the top of the mountain and then we get some flat walking towards the dirt road that would basically be our driveway if we bought this property.

That dirt line off to the right would be the backdrop to the driveway

I'm a fan of any property that has a driveway at all.  In this case, it would need a bit of clearing, but hey, it's present!

Driveway...

It seems likely that the property is $34K because it's pretty much all slope.  And not gentle slope.  On the walk over the flat part, you can look over the valley that this property is.

You can see the one place we might build off in the back a bit to the left

I think this picture makes the valley look more benign than it really is.  Over the lip of the bushes right in front of me taking the picture is a good drop of at least 70' (that's 21 meters for you European folk).  But, at the end of the "driveway" there was potential.  There were a few smallish places where, given the right equipment we could probably clear enough land to build something moderately like we have planned.  We'd just have to be more modular than all-together.  And... it seems like there's a well there.  We don't know if it works, but presumably it could be made to work if it's currently experiencing issues.

This is where we think we could clear to build

The view from the land we'd build on isn't amazing, but it's still good.  We'd be looking at this mountain.

And we'd have this view to the east.

If we didn't have a mountain to the west, we'd have this view we caught while walking back!

One nice thing about basically building in the middle of a hill is that I wouldn't feel like I was about to fall off the top of the Earth.  But, we still get a nice view and the likelihood that people wouldn't be able to stare in at us easily since the front of our home will be windows floor to ceiling.  I asked Chris on the way back if his sister, who doesn't do heights, would have a hard time with the view.  It's difficult without pads already built to guess at how stable you'll feel at such a height.

So it's not the best view.  There's clearing to be done.  Possibly it would need a grading permit.  The property lines aren't totally known and the place where we determined it would be possible to build is right near an edge.  We don't know if the well works and it looks like it's made of something that is rusted already.  But... for $34K, I asked Adam to look into it.  Maybe, if we're the first ones to build on this dirt road, they'll let us name it!  Butt Monkey Creek, here we come!  (Just kidding.)

About 1/3 up the second hill.  Do you see our black car parked in front of the yellow truck at the beginning of the road?

*EDIT* Adam says this land is pending sale.  Sadness.